by Sandra Hill
“Come then,” Zeb motioned, and before Beltane knew what he was about, Zeb sank his fangs in the boy’s neck. He sucked out some of the vile blood, spit it on the floor, then fanged him again, this time infusing him with some of his own purer blood.
After the fanging was over, Beltane just gaped at him. “Is that all?”
Zeb nodded. He had no idea if his actions would help Beltane. “Go with a pure heart,” he said, which seemed like a good thing to say. “Now hide again until this is over.”
He left and made his way toward the roof. On the way, he removed his AK-47 from the inside of his cloak, unfolded it and rechecked the magazine. Half full. Good enough! He had extra clips stored in his chest rig. In addition, he carried an old short sword he’d picked up on his way here; that had been his weapon of choice back when he’d served in the Roman Army. Having made those last-minute checks, he tossed his cloak aside, for ease of movement. And opened the door slowly onto the roof.
At first, Jasper and the others didn’t see him. In humanoid form, in full military gear, they were all leaning over the gaps in the stone crenellations of the roof. From this viewpoint they could see for many miles around. The snowy tundra was dotted with the dark shapes of the cloaked vangels engaged in swordplay with escaping demons and Lucipires. Blood and wet patches that must be slime splotched the white ground.
Without giving any warning, Zeb propped his sword against the wall and raised his right arm, bracing his assault weapon on his shoulder. The deep, popping sound of the AK-47 echoed as all the Lucipires except Jasper fell to the ground. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat! Over and over, Zeb shot until he was sure he’d gotten them all, not just deadly wounds, but through the hearts with the specially treated bullets. Occasionally, with an efficiency usually reserved for the military, he had to pop out a used mag and insert a new one with up to thirty bullets.
Jasper, who wore what must be an Army general’s camo uniform, just stared at him, his fangs elongated, the only sign of his vampirism. Same as the vangels. Well, except for all the wispy almost-wings he was seeing today. Jasper, too, carried an assault rifle and a sword. He had to know that this would be a one-on-one fight, but that Zeb had something to say first. He also must be sensing that he had lost this final fight and that he would soon be facing his maker . . . Satan.
In fact, Jasper was probably up here awaiting the opening of the teletransport shield so that he could leave voluntarily. Zeb couldn’t allow that because, sure as sin, Jasper would be back on earth sometime in the near future putting together another army of Lucipires.
But first, he had other issues to settle.
“Spit it out, traitor. What have you to say, Zebulan?”
“Back then, before I ever joined the Roman Army, did you have me in your crosshairs, even then?”
“Of course.”
“And you primed me on a path of evil so you could eventually pick me off?”
Jasper shrugged. “You know the routine of a Lucipire. Get the scent of a sinner, or someone contemplating some great sin, and prod them on. Offer temptations. Encourage evil deeds. You, with your greed, were already prime pickings.”
In other words, the devil was on his doorstep even before he went outside. So to speak. Oh, Zeb knew his great sin had been his own fault, but he’d just wondered if there had been some kind of push.
“And my wife and children?” he choked out.
Jasper smiled. “The side benefits of being a demon. Being able to view the destruction humans can do to themselves. Your downfall would not have been half so satisfying if I hadn’t been able to steer your loved ones toward a pitiful death. Your little Rachel was especially sweet as she took her last breaths. And your wife, did you know she cursed you in the end for having abandoned them to such a fate?”
Zeb felt wet tears on his face. The agony of his guilt was almost more than he could bear.
“I came to love you, Zebulan. Like a son.”
“Pfff! What father forces his son to do the things you’ve had me do over the centuries?”
Jasper shrugged. “It is what demons do.”
“Do you never regret what you gave up? Being one of God’s favored angels?”
“Only every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year of every century,” Jasper admitted. “But I love sin more, and that is a fact. You cannot really kill me, you know. Yes, you can destroy my Lucipire self, but I will still be one of Satan’s disciples.”
“I know,” Zeb said and realized that Beltane had come up and stood beside him.
Jasper’s eyes went wide. “Et tu, Brute?”
Beltane had both hands on a pistol which he had aimed at Jasper.
Zeb hadn’t even known the boy could handle a weapon.
With a shot to Jasper’s leg, Beltane said, “For the first time you sodomized me.”
The second shot went to Jasper’s right arm which caused his sword to drop to the stone roof. “For the times you forced me to sodomize others.”
He shot off one ear and snarled, “For making me drink blood, and liking it.”
Jasper wasn’t even fighting Beltane’s attacks. At this point, he probably welcomed death.
“For giving me Marie as a partner fifty years ago, then sending her off to Hell for refusing to service a troop of visiting haakai whilst I was gone.” This shot went directly to Jasper’s groin.
Zeb gave Beltane a sharp look, and realized that the young Lucipire looked half-crazed. His eyes were blazing, spit drooled from his mouth. Had Zeb’s fanging pushed him over the edge, or was it just too many years under Jasper’s thumb?
In any case, none of Beltane’s bullets had been specially treated, and Zeb feared the master Lucipire would die, and come back again as a demon vampire. Raising his short sword now, Zeb used both hands to thrust the heavy weapon directly through Jasper’s heart.
The demon just smiled as he began to fade into a puddle of slime. “I will see you again,” he promised. And laughed.
Just then, a group of vangels blasted out of the door. In addition, some others, including Vikar, flew up and over the top of the battlements. How did they do that? Oh. Zeb noticed that they had white wings. How cool!
“What in bloody hell is going on here?” Vikar demanded to know. He took one glance at the beasts whose features were fading, but were still discernible. In particular, Jasper’s grinning face. “You dared? You bloody hell dared to disobey my orders?” Vikar was livid.
“And who the hell are you?” Vikar had turned on Beltane and sniffed the air, confused.
Beltane smelled of Lucipire, but not. He smelled faintly of something else, too. Not vangel. Not human. A mixture of good and evil all in one, human and inhuman, Zeb decided.
Looking from Zeb to Beltane to Zeb again, Vikar asked Zeb in a steely voice, “What did you do?”
Beltane, meanwhile, was staring at the dissolving mass that had been Jasper with tears welling in his eyes. To Vikar, Beltane must have appeared in grief over losing his master.
“I did what I had to do,” Zeb said.
“Aaarrgh! Take him into custody and lock him up back at Transylvania until I . . . rather, Michael . . . can decide what to do with the rogue.”
“Which one?” Mordr asked. “Zeb or the idiot?”
Beltane did, actually, look like a half-brained idiot, stunned, no doubt, by what he’d actually garnered the nerve to do. His shoulders were slumped and his arms dangled at his sides, the gun having fallen to the floor.
“Both,” Vikar snarled.
“Did you know you have actual wings now, Vikar?” Zeb couldn’t help but remark. “Really nice, white ones.”
“Bite me!” Vikar said, not at all appeased by Zeb’s compliment. But Zeb noticed him glancing back over his shoulder to check for himself.
Just then, Regina came through the door. With a quick scan of the area, she took in what had happened. Then she tilted her head in question at Zeb.
Zeb didn’t need to be a rocket scie
ntist, or even a body language specialist, to recognize the expression on her face. Profound hurt.
She must consider his actions a betrayal, a rejection of the love she’d professed for him a short time ago. Because, even if they were lifemates, and that was yet to be decided, his failure to follow orders meant he did not care what happened to himself. Or to her.
Chapter 19
Strange doings, down on the bayou . . .
For two weeks, Regina traveled about the world with one team or another to rid the world of any remaining Lucipires. She could have returned to the castle occasionally for some of the celebrations, but she couldn’t bear to see Zeb. His betrayal had cut too deep. She might not ever recover.
He must have been using her during their short time together. How he must have laughed when she’d told him she loved him! What a fool she’d been, to think a man like him would care for a woman like her. A witch!
She should have put a curse on him right from the start. She’d become soft. No more!
Vikar remarked whenever he saw her now, “Regina’s got her snark back.” And he wasn’t the only one who teased her on the subject of her scowling countenance.
“I never lost it,” she shot back every time, and usually accompanied her retorts with a waggle of her fingers toward their male parts.
Unfortunately, no one took her curses seriously anymore. They just laughed. She blamed Zeb for that, too. He’d made her a laughingstock.
She never asked anyone about Zeb, but she overheard others talking about him. Apparently, he was confined to a tower room on the fourth floor of the castle, shunned.
Good. Better yet, he should be boiled in oil, or exiled to the remains of Horror Castle, or . . . or . . . something.
Zeb’s fate, like all the others of the vangels, awaited Michael’s final decision, which would be announced at the Final Reckoning to be held in two days.
And wasn’t that an ominous-sounding title for their meeting with Michael?
For that encounter, she would have to return to the Transylvania castle. Not everyone would, though. Not right away. They were being asked to come in shifts of fifty each. In the meantime, some were on Grand Key Island, or Harek’s small telecommunications island, or the ravaged plantation in Louisiana where Ivak had erected a sort of tent city, until the property’s ultimate fate could be determined.
She decided to go to Louisiana in the interim. Maybe she could charm a few snakes there, as a side offering of her witch business, or she could bring a few back to Transylvania to slip into Zeb’s room.
That was mean of her. She hated this slide down to the dark side of her personality. She wanted to be happy and content, like other people. She wanted to rejoice in the demise of the Lucipires. She wanted love, dammit! She wanted to be left alone. She wanted to be part of a family. She wanted, she wanted, she wanted! And wasn’t that what had gotten her into trouble in the first place?
“It’s that bad, huh?” Ivak’s wife, Gabrielle, asked, as she came up to the porch of one of the restored slave cabins where Regina was staying. Although Jasper’s minions had destroyed all of Ivak’s work in restoring the plantation mansion, appropriately named Heaven’s End, he’d left the slave cabins alone . . . all twenty of them. They were really quite charming little log cottages, if you managed to forget their original purpose.
Regina motioned for Gabrielle to sit on the other porch chair and offered her a glass of iced tea from the pitcher that sat on a small table between them.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Regina lied.
“Honey, you look like someone shot your dog, and your cat, and your parrot, all in one day. And, by the way, did you know your cat Thor has taken a shine to Zeb, and he keeps him company in his tower room all the time?”
No, Regina hadn’t known that. But it figured that even her cat would betray her. Regina hated that she was still wallowing in pity, and that it apparently showed.
“Don’t worry, though. Things will work out. They always do.”
Gabrielle was a lawyer who handled pretty much the most hopeless cases in the legal system, and she was married to the world’s most womanizing vangel, before they were married, of course. Now, he just had an eye for every female who passed by, or rather they had an eye for him, the handsome devil . . . uh, angel . . . uh, whatever. How Gabrielle managed to remain such an optimist was beyond Regina.
“Where’s your little one today?” Regina asked, instead.
“He’s with his daddy over at the prison.”
Regina arched her brows at that. Ivak was a chaplain at Angola Prison, of all things (for a Viking guilty of the sin of lust . . . enough said!), when he wasn’t off doing vangel stuff.
Gabrielle laughed at Regina’s astonishment. “There’s a concert there today, and Ivak figured Mikey might be an inspiration to some of the more redeemable inmates.”
“If you say so,” Regina said dubiously. Everyone knew that Angola contained some of the worst of the worst criminals, but then the vangels knew better than most that second chances do work.
“Zeb asks everyone about you,” Gabrielle said. “He must care. And he keeps sending you letters—”
“—that I return unopened.” There was nothing that Zeb could say now that would erase what he had done. When Gabrielle was about to continue on that subject, Regina put up a halting hand. “Please, no more on the subject. I’m trying my best to forget the cad.”
Gabrielle muttered something like, “How’s that working for you?” But then she surrendered and said, “I need to drive over to Tante Lulu’s place to get some okra. Dagmar is making a gumbo for dinner tonight.”
The two sisters, Dagmar and Inga, had turned out to be quite the cooks, even in the rustic makeshift kitchen in the burned-out shell of the old plantation house. The kitchen had been in a separate building and was made of brick. There was no way they could share a kitchen at the castle in Transylvania. Besides, Lizzie had Andrea’s help.
“There’s someone out on Bayou Black that I think you’d like to meet. Come with me.”
“What? Zeb isn’t here, is he?”
“Of course not. You know that Vikar considers him a prisoner of war, or some such thing.”
Regina didn’t want to see the louse in person, but still she felt oddly deflated that it wasn’t Zeb that Gabrielle referred to. “Who, then? Oh, no! You’re not becoming a matchmaker?”
Gabrielle laughed. “No. Just come. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
So it was that a short time later, Regina was at the small bayou cottage of the most eccentric old lady she’d ever met. And Regina had met some weird witchy crones in her time.
No, Louise Rivard, better known as Tante Lulu, was no witch, but she was a traiteur, or folk healer. Cajun to the bone, and she was a bony little five-foot-zero thing, with tight purple curls, a pink tank top covering nonexistent breasts proclaiming in gold sparkles, “I GOT MY CAJUN ON!,” lavender running shorts, orange ruffled anklet socks, and white orthopedic shoes. She had on enough makeup to plaster the Sistine Chapel. In other words, she was rather adorable.
“Welcome, welcome,” the old lady said, reaching up to kiss Gabrielle on both cheeks, then surprising Regina by doing the same to her. Gabrielle introduced Regina, and Tante Lulu said, “I been ’spectin’ you fer days.”
Huh?
“Girl, me and St. Jude been pals fer decades now.” She pointed to a life-size statue of the saint who held a birdbath in his hands in the middle of the yard. “Me and Jude heard yer thunderbolt of love all the way down here in the bayou.”
Huh?
“Tante Lulu has a theory about the thunderbolt of love hitting people who are destined to fall in love,” Gabrielle explained. “Once it hits you, you’re a goner.”
“It sure happened to you ’n that rascal Ivak, guar-an-teed!”
Gabrielle just smiled.
Regina wasn’t buying this crap. “Hmpfh! I haven’t felt any bolts lately.” Just a stab through the heart.
&
nbsp; “Sometimes ya jist gotta be open ta love,” Tante Lulu said, patting her on the arm. “Why doan ya sit down there on that bench next ta St. Jude and have a little chat? I’m gonna take Gabrielle over ta mah little garden patch ta pick us some okra.”
“Where’s your visitor?” Gabrielle asked Tante Lulu.
“He’ll be here by and by,” Tante Lulu replied.
Regina glared at the two of them as they walked down the yard to Tante Lulu’s garden, which was really a rather large garden, or at least a compact one jam-packed with lots of different vegetables. Soon the basket Gabrielle had brought with her was filled not just with okra but tomatoes, string beans, beets, squash, various lettuces, cabbage, radishes, carrots, and whatnot.
Sitting down, Regina glanced around the peaceful setting. It was a cute cottage with a wide back porch, its several rockers facing the bayou stream. Steam heat rose off the water, and it was not yet noon. Normal humid temperatures for this subtropical region. Regina realized in that moment that she could be happy with a simple place like this. She could see herself gardening, which she’d always enjoyed, even when it was only to grow witchy herbs and minimal subsistence vegetables in the cold Norselands. The peacefulness of the setting could fill some empty gap in her lost soul. Maybe.
She glanced up at the statue, which seemed to be staring down at her, with pity, or was it compassion? Same thing!
“So, St. Jude, what’s up? I hear you’re the patron saint of hopeless cases. I pretty much fit into that category. Any idea what I should do about it?”
Nothing. No magical words from above, or from the statue’s frozen lips.
“I’ve forgotten how to pray. I know, I know. Vangels should have praying down pat, but I’ve been too busy being snarky and bitter and . . .” She shrugged. She really did feel hopeless.
“I’m tired of being so bitter and unhappy,” she confided. “In truth, I don’t really want Zeb to be hurt in any way. He’s a good man. You should be helping him. Not me.” She felt better having said that, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Oh, she was still deeply hurt, but hatred had been eating away at her for days. And she didn’t hate Zeb anyway. Not really. If anything, she hated herself.